MLB Bullets Has A Trip To The Doctor Planned

My NCAA bracket is already busted and the games haven't even started yet. I guess I shouldn't have picked Hearst College to win it all.

• The story of baseball this weekend is health, or rather the lack of it. Five pitchers have in the past week have gone down with injuries. Just days after the Braves learned that Kris Medlen would need Tommy John surgery, they learned that Brandon Beachy may need the same operation. The two are going to carpool to see Dr. James Andrews.
• Then there is the Diamondbacks young all-star pitcher, Patrick Corbin. He has a partially-torn UCL and may need Tommy John surgery as well.
• The Mets Jonathon Niese exited Sunday's game with elbow discomfort. He's scheduled to take an MRI today. Niese says he doesn't think it's serious, but that's what Brandon Beachy said at first too.
• The Athletics had to shut down Jarrod Parker this week with forearm tightness and he'll see Dr. Andrews today as well. The A's were already dealing with A.J. Griffin's inflamed elbow, who will also see a doctor today.
• The Diamondbacks have some big decisions to make about who will take Corbin's place in the rotation.
• Thomas Boswell says that health is the one thing that we haven't been able to quantify yet. He also notes that the NL East race has been shaken up by pitching injuries.
• Ken Rosenthal wants to know why with all the pitch counts and other things teams do to try to keep pitchers healthy, why is the number of injuries to pitchers increasing? Yes, he admits things might be even worse if teams still ran things the old way.
• And it's not just pitchers. Tigers shortstop Jose Iglesias is expected to miss most of season with a shin injury. With Iglesias gone, the Tigers might look at free agent Stephen Drew.
• Or not. One report has the Tigers pursuing Mariners shortstop Nick Franklin instead.
• Dayn Perry thinks the Tigers ought to grab Drew.
• Agent Scott Boras, who represents Drew and Kendrys Morales, says both free agents are willing to wait as long as it takes to get the right deal. There has been some suggestion that both will sit out until after the June draft, when teams would no longer lose a draft pick to sign either player.
• Ervin Santana, who waited a long time to sign with the Braves, says he thought free agency would be easier.
• One guy who is getting better is Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt, who has just completed six months of radiation and chemotherapy for skin cancer and is now cancer-free. On the trip back from the doctor, Schmidt stopped by Wrigley Field and hit another two home runs.
• Matt Garza apparently wants to stop by Wrigley Field and kick some teeth in. That's just his way of saying he wants to beat his former team. At least I hope that's what he means. I'm pretty sure that's what he means.
• One pitcher who isn't injured this spring is Justin Verlander, who's looking like he's back to his old self.
• Maybe this is just asking for the baseball gods to strike someone down, but Peter Gammons lists eight pitchers he thinks could be top of the rotation pitchers one day.
• The Yankees played an exhibition game in Panama to honor Mariano Rivera, and four Marlins pitchers no-hit the mighty Bronx Bombers.
• A lot of people think this is the year Giancarlo Stanton busts out. Of course, it's not like what he was doing before was mediocre or anything.
• The Marlins are once again offering a Groupon deal for opening day tickets.
• Marc Normandin thinks that the AL West is the most wide open race of the upcoming season with all five teams having a realistic chance to win the title. Just kidding, Astros fans. He thinks four of the five teams have a realistic chance to win the AL West.
• The Mariners demoted Jesus Montero to the minors, although he did hit well this spring.
• Mike Trout is not giving the Angels a deadline for a contract extension. He's willing to negotiate during the season.
• Ken Rosenthal thinks the Ryne Sandberg--Jimmy Rollins brouhaha is the least of the Phillies worries. The scouts that he talks to think the Phillies are a really bad team this season.
• Dave Cameron in an ESPN Insider article thinks the Phillies need hold a fire sale. ($) They need to tear the team down and start over. Oh sure, once the Cubs and the Astros start doing something, all the nerdy teams start trying to copy the cool kids.
• Despite being 87 42 years-old, Jose Contreras won't retire until they rip the uniform off his back.
• The Rays shaved their heads for charity.
• By relying more on a two-seam fastball and less on the pure velocity of his four-seamer, Andrew Cashner is developing into an ace.
• Gabe Kapler explains what some of the phrases that hitters use to describe their swing really mean.
• Bryce Harper went to the zoo. He declared giraffes "so legit." They're my daughter's favorite animal at the zoo too, Bryce. And sometimes baseball writers just have to write about something.
• The Lowell Spinners are going to wear some awful Christmas sweater-inspired uniforms. I'd say this ugly-uniforms-in-the-minors thing is getting out of hand, but then I remember: anything to get fans into the ballpark
• The Cardinals are getting Eddie Gaedel's 1/8 uniform back from Cooperstown. Yes, Gaedel played for the Browns, but the jersey originally belonged to now Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. when he was a boy. With the Cardinals opening up their own Hall of Fame, DeWitt asked for the uniform back.
• Carl Crawford is not expected to make the trip to Australia, as he awaits the birth of his child. If the baby is born before the trip, he'll head out.
• The Dodgers are praising Juan Uribe as a great teammate. I'm skeptical that being a good teammate can help a team win games, but I know that if I'm a manager and I had a choice between two players of roughly equal talent, I'm picking the nice guy over the jerk who is impossible to be around.
• The Dodgers are not only spending money on free agents, they're also using it on amateur free agents and to build up their farm system.
• The Diamondbacks are already getting into retaliatory beanball wars, and they haven't even left for Australia with the Dodgers yet.
• In anticipation of the trip to Australia, Tyler Maas looks at the influx of Australians in major league baseball over the past 25 years.
• Grant Brisbee has a taxonomy of the faces players make when they strike out. And I used to think I had too much time on my hands.
• And finally, you can win a date with Josh Collmenter! As a way of promoting this weekend's games in Australia, you can enter a contest to win a date with the Diamondbacks pitcher. Just a few conditions. One, you have to be Australian. Two, the deadline to enter has already passed, so you would have had to have already entered. Three, presumably, you have to be female. That's not made explicit, but it does sound like it is a requirement. Finally, Josh has said he likes tall, athletic girls. So your odds would be likely be better if you were a member of the Australian national women's volleyball team. (Here's Collmenter on an Australian morning show.)

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.